Whenever I write or talk about abortion and mention the possibility of a slippery slope, I am told that the slippery slope discussion is a straw dog. There are rules after all! But rules are only as good as the people who follow them and the institutions that are set up to oversee them. There is an assumption of honesty and human goodness. In the case of the Philadelphia House of Horrors there was a breakdown on both fronts. Abortionist Dr. Gosnell has no ethical/moral core and the overseers in Philadelphia dropped the ball for 17 years. Anyone who assumes Gosnell's clinic is a one-off is blinded by ideology. Those who refuse to look at limits in abortion are stuck in the rut of Manichean thinking.

So what if Harper muzzled an MP for suggesting a motion to condemn sex-selective abortion? It's not as though it's a matter of national import, and denouncing the motion, as MP Mark Warawa would have it, would have had no practical implications in and of itself. The only value of his motion would have been to reintroduce the word "abortion" into the national conversation, and that's something Liberals and NDPers, I imagine, don't want. They should stop posturing and get behind the Prime Minister -- he's the best friend liberals have right now.

At the University of Waterloo last week, Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth was scheduled to speak to a group of students at an event organized by the Students for Life campus club. Unfortunately, a group of students shut down Mr. Woodworth's speech by shouting him down, until he was left with no choice but to cancel the event.

Here's an age old riddle for you: how many old white guys does it take to editorialize on a subject that has to do solely with a woman's most intimate choice in life? Well, if you're the National Post, then four. The outrage radiating from the old white men commentariat ranges from "well, why can't we have this debate?" to "fetuses are people too, and they have rights just like you and me."